Bookselling Is Not a Crime
Join bookshops around the world to celebrate the right to read freely.
I’m Teaching a New Online Writing Class
I was happy to be asked recently to teach an online writing masterclass for Litro, a London literary magazine. I’m teaching a four-week course on breaking writer’s block. In a decade and a half of writing novels, short stories, journalism…
Road Stories Show a Different Side of America
Reading Hounded: Stories From the American Road by British journalist Alan Emmins gives a vital insight into the little-seen sights of everyday America, from small-town meth labs to bounty hunters and the aching sadness of a long-distance ride on a…
New Poetry Project Explores Mental Health With Tarot Cards
A Q&A with poet Sascha Aurora Akhtar and illustrator John Alexander Arnold about Only Dying Sparkles, a new project combining poetry, illustration and tarot cards.
Literature and Empathy
As a (very) part-time journalist, I get inundated with press releases, most of which I delete. But one email subject line today caught my eye: “Step into the shoes of a migrant in the UK with groundbreaking audio experience.” In…
New Opportunity to Get Started in Fiction Translation
I’ve always wondered how you get started in fiction translation. I mean, translating a novel seems like such a huge endeavour, and how do you get commissioned to do that? I guess you could translate short stories or something, but…
Help fund a new piece of collaborative refugee fiction
Help fund a Kickstarter campaign for Shatila Stories, a collaborative piece of fiction by nine refugee writers from the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon.
New Bitmead Bursary Winner Announced
Winning the Luke Bitmead Bursary back in 2008 changed my life in many ways, some of which I’ve detailed on the blog before. One thing I haven’t written about so much is the wonderful people it introduced me to, most notably Luke’s…
Q&A with the founders of new indie publisher Dodo Ink
Dodo Ink is a new independent publisher in the UK, promising to publish “bold, daring, risky but accessible literary novels”. They’re currently running a crowdfunding campaign to fund their first three novels, with incentives ranging from free books to getting…